


the beautiful hello

by tunemyart



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: also explicitly acknowledging the actual reason Philippa came into the future, just something more akin to the greeting I needed them to have, post-3.03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:21:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27333349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tunemyart/pseuds/tunemyart
Summary: “Michael. Your long hair suits you,” is how Philippa Georgiou greets Michael after nine hundred and thirty years.-Michael and Philippa greet each other after Michael beams back aboard Discovery in 3.03.
Relationships: Michael Burnham & Mirror Philippa Georgiou
Comments: 3
Kudos: 60





	the beautiful hello

“Michael. Your long hair suits you,” is how Philippa Georgiou greets Michael after nine hundred and thirty years. 

It’s as much of a surprise as it ever is to see Philippa wearing a Starfleet uniform, but it’s starting to feel less like a ghost has walked out of her memory at the sight. Perhaps it’s tempered by the way that Michael herself is feeling something like a ghost now that she’s back in Starfleet uniform and wandering around these old, familiar hallways.

“Thank you,” Michael murmurs, a little surprised that something more caustic isn’t the first thing out of Philippa’s mouth. “I hear you took down Control.”

A satisfied, vindictive smile crosses her face, suggesting just how much she’d enjoyed doing so. Michael doesn’t bother asking how she’d done it. “That I did,” Philippa says. “And it certainly isn’t capable of being a problem anymore for anybody at any point in time.”

It’s information Michael had already had, of course, if only indirectly; but it doesn’t stop the wave of relief that this has all been worth it, one year delayed, from crashing over her in muted waves. “Good,” is all she says, but Philippa shoots her a sly, knowing smile at the vehemence in her voice. 

A full year spent as far away as she could get from the person she used to be has done a lot to soften the searing pain of her captain’s death and, inextricably linked to it, the unending scream of Michael’s guilt. It’s something that will always live at her core, but where it had once seemed impossible to look at this woman and not see Philippa - _her_ Philippa - even through the layers and layers of her that are as antithetical to her as possible, Michael is mildly surprised to discover that that’s less the case now that she’s face to face with her once again.

Surprised, but glad. _In a sad kind of way?_ a voice in her mind that sounds a lot like Tilly suggests. Michael smiles, the familiar stab of grief lancing her chest again. 

_Yeah,_ she answers it. _In a sad kind of way._

“I am… very glad that you made it safely,” Philippa says haltingly. Michael’s unsure whether the hesitation is over her practice with expressing the sentiment or with her - _a_ Michael, the wrong Michael - as the object of that sentiment. 

“Me too,” she returns quietly, honestly. “I was surprised to see you were still on Discovery.”

“Yes, well,” says Philippa. “You certainly seemed it.” 

“ _You_ certainly seemed ready to stage the surprise.” 

“What’s life without a little flair for the dramatic?” Philippa asks innocently. “Besides, the outpouring of emotion happening on the platform was a bit too excessive for my tastes.” 

“Uh huh,” Michael says, and levels her with a look. “Come on, Philippa. Why _did_ you come?” 

“Isn’t it obvious?” Philippa says, scoffing, although Michael knows her well enough even now to identify the vulnerability it’s masking. “I came for the same reason all these other sentimental fools did. I came for _you.”_

There’s nothing but truth in the way she fidgets with a restless energy, as if the words and all the unspoken things they shelter make her uncomfortable from the inside out. And, Michael considers, perhaps that’s simply how truth will always be for this Philippa, written as it is into the foundations of her existence and the dissonance that will always exist between that existence and this universe that Michael has dragged her into. 

It’s impossible not to think of the woman she’d yanked out of time and space without giving her a choice in the matter. _Philippa,_ was all Michael had been able to think, and she’d meant her captain and she’d meant this twisted image of her, and neither of them had been real, and Michael had ached so fiercely with regret and potential that she’d burned until the very moment that Philippa rematerialized next to her in the blinding transporter light - real, terrible, not hers - and said _What have you done to me?_

_I’m sorry,_ Michael hadn’t said then, heart twisting in her chest so that she couldn’t speak even if she’d wanted to. But the words aren’t any more readily forthcoming now, either. 

“I never thought you were coming,” Michael says. She can only think of the profound relief and gratitude that had overcome her in Detmer’s arms at the sight of Philippa standing apart from them, waiting, unassuming, a gift Michael had never thought to look for from the universe another time. For all the changes of the past year, for everything she’s had to let go in order to evolve and survive, she’s not ready to live in a universe without Philippa Georgiou. She wonders if she ever really will be. “I thought I’d left you behind.”

“Don’t be so morbidly sentimental,” Philippa chides with a knowing look, but more kindly than Michael expects from her, doesn’t say anything else about the constancy of Michael’s grief and recklessness when it comes to leaving any Philippa behind. “This was the far less boring of the two options, in any case.”

Michael nearly rolls her eyes at the deflection, but finds herself smiling instead. “I’m glad,” she says, and watches Philippa’s face cloud with reflexive doubt, distrust, and something yet more achingly open and searching than Michael has ever seen on this Philippa’s face, or any other’s. “Thank you for coming,” she says as sincerely as she knows how. 

A long beat - and Philippa seems to accept the truth of it in turn. “It’s hardly a dinner party, Michael, there’s no need for such banal niceties,” she snarks, but her body next to Michael’s is more relaxed than it has been since before any of this had started.

Michael smiles anyway, letting herself relax against the bulkhead behind her too. “All the same,” she says. “You didn’t really think I’d be upset, did you?” 

“I suppose I don’t know what I thought,” Philippa admits. “You’re so…”

“So what?” Michael prompts, tensing. 

Philippa rolls her eyes. “ _Soft._ Or,” she corrects herself, with an appraising glance under which Michael feels herself, as ever, uncomfortably revealed, “you were, at any rate. It always seemed I never knew what spots would hurt you when I dared to press on them, there were so many I didn’t expect.”

With some effort, Michael bites back the comment that Philippa could always choose not to press on any spots, soft or not. She suspects anyway that for better or for worse, nothing is quite so intimate for this Philippa as the test and observation, the keen focus and drive to see just what kind of response her poking will garner her. 

“You’ve taken some pretty good guesses,” Michael says dryly instead.

“Those were the obvious ones,” Philippa counters. “You wear your heart on your sleeve, even if you hadn’t admitted several of them to me directly; it’s not terribly difficult.”

But her voice is something approaching fond, and Michael knows it for what it is. 

“You always have had a problem with that,” she acknowledges, but refuses to apologize.

“I will always have a problem with anything that can critically wound you,” Philippa says with startling frankness, and Michael looks at her in surprise. “I know we’ll never agree on this. You’ve embedded too many things that can too deeply in yourself in this universe for me to ever get them out of you, even if I were to try. Not without it causing a critical wound in and of itself.”

“Are you saying you won’t try?” Michael asks, interested.

Again, Philippa scoffs. “Have I tried since you dragged me into this awful universe?” 

Michael smiles to herself - Philippa isn’t looking, for once. “Not really,” she admits. “I guess I should say thanks for that too.”

Philippa doesn’t say _you’re welcome,_ but her eyes are quick to return to Michael’s face and incisive when they get there to find the smile that Michael doesn’t hide. 

“You’ve changed, Michael Burnham,” she says. 

“Yes,” Michael agrees, because it’s true, even if she’s still settling into it, even if that change is still in process and absolutely not finite. “I have.”

Philippa appraises her with squinted eyes and pursed lips, before they resolve into a smile her Philippa never would have worn. “I think I like it,” she tells Michael.

  
Michael laughs, prompting a different spark in Philippa’s eyes that’s something between interest and delight. _Maybe we’re both becoming something new,_ she doesn’t say. “Come on, Admiral,” is what she does say. “Let’s go do the thing.”


End file.
